Charles Guyard, edited by Yanis Darras 07h48, March 22, 2023

The sailors of the Bay of Biscay meet this Wednesday in Rennes, to demonstrate, after the decision of the Council of State to suspend fishing in the area, to protect dolphins. Much more than this new ban, professionals in the sector are demanding a clear reading of their future.

In the Bay of Biscay, it is the hecatomb. In the space of a dozen days, nearly 500 dolphins washed up along the coast, most entangled in fishing nets. So, faced with the scale of the disaster, the Council of State has just ordered the closure of fishing areas in the Gulf.

A decision that revives the anger of fishermen, already worried about the survival of the profession and who decided to demonstrate today in Rennes.

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A bleak future

"To whom will we leave the keys of fishing in France", worries at the microphone of Europe 1 Romain Juan. At 31 years old, the professional intends to keep all the cards of French fishing on the territory. But the problem: fewer and fewer young people are embarking on the profession of sinner. "I just started, I got zero euros of state aid," he explains. "Why is it coming to this? What is the policy applied," he asks?

Restrictive quotas, fuels too expensive, licences not renewed due to Brexit and now areas closed to trawlers for several months... The future of French fishing indeed seems very bleak.

"What do we want now?" continues the fisherman, worried to see foreign trawlers arrive on the coast of France, for lack of French fishermen still in practice. "Do we want industrial fishing or do we want to stay on artisanal, responsible and local fishing? What we want is above all to help us and to tell us where we want to go," adds Romain.

Dependence on land-based jobs

This lack of direction, they should be more than 2,000 to come to deplore it in the streets of Rennes this Wednesday. And not only sailors, because it is a whole sector that is threatened, like Eric, who is working on a boat at the port of La Turballe, in Loire-Atlantique. He is a naval electrician.

"We live thanks to the maintenance of new equipment. In reality, it's a whole bunch of things that, throughout the year, make us work. But nothing will replace that," says the electrician. In fact, the equation is simple one sailor who drops anchor, it is on average seven jobs destroyed on land.